Show 1465: Food Fight! Should We Flip the Food Pyramid Upside-Down?

Every five years, the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services jointly issue guidelines on what we should eat. The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2025-2030) have been controversial. [Here is a link: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov] Among other things, the administration decided to flip the food pyramid upside-down in illustrating its recommendations. Why did that cause such a stir, and what will it mean for you?

At The People’s Pharmacy, we strive to bring you up to date, rigorously researched insights and conversations about health, medicine, wellness and health policies and health systems. While these conversations intend to offer insight and perspective, the content is provided solely for informational and educational purposes. Please consult your healthcare provider before making any changes to your medical care or treatment.

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You could listen through your local public radio station or get the live stream at 7 am EST on Saturday, March 14, 2026, through your computer or smart phone (wunc.org).  Here is a link so you can find which stations carry our broadcast. If you can’t listen to the broadcast, you may wish to hear the podcast later. You can subscribe through your favorite podcast provider, download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of the page, or listen to the stream on this post starting on March 16, 2026.

Why Flip the Food Pyramid?

Nobody has actually explained to us why they decided to flip the food pyramid on its head. The food pyramid itself debuted in 1991 as an illustration of what we should eat, but many people found it confusing. In 2011, it was replaced by a MyPlate graphic. So why return to the food pyramid now, especially upside-down?

Our guest, noted nutrition researcher Christopher Gardner, suggest that it might be a way of denoting dramatic changes from previous guidance. Spoiler alert: only a few details are dramatically different. The main changes are a commendable emphasis on eating real food and attention to red meat as a protein source and full-fat rather than low-fat dairy products.

Do Americans Need More Protein?

If you pay attention at the supermarket, you’ll probably notice that a lot of product tout their protein content. Even things that don’t seem like they’d stand out as sources of protein (granola, pancake mix) are being offered in containers emblazoned with the promise of protein. Surprisingly, though, this is not a response to an urgent need. Most Americans get adequate protein and don’t need to concentrate on increasing their intake. Might it be a marketing tool?

Should We Worry About Dairy as We Flip the Food Pyramid?

Generally, public health experts recommend that we avoid foods high in saturated fat such as butter or cheese and opt instead for lower fat items, like skim milk. Consuming excessive amounts of saturated fat can raise blood levels of dangerous LDL cholesterol. On the other hand, Dr. Gardner points out that dairy fat differs in some ways from the saturated fats in meat, for instance. We don’t have enough studies to evaluate health consequences of consuming full-fat dairy. Will that raise cholesterol? Might it increase the chance of heart disease? We still need more research to be able to tell.

What About Eggs?

Speaking of cholesterol, what about eggs? For decades, Americans were warned not to eat eggs. Experts thought these cholesterol-rich foods would raise the level of cholesterol in our blood. But although eggs are high in cholesterol, they are low in saturated fat. Joe describes an astonishing experiment in which a person ate two dozen eggs a day. After a month, his LDL cholesterol was lower than when he started. Dr. Gardner remarks that we need to know not only what we are eating, but also instead of what and with what. Eggs with sausage and cheese are quite different from a veggie frittata.

What’s for Breakfast?

Let’s consider what people might be eating for breakfast instead of eggs. Quick toaster pastries, sweetened cereal, orange juice and toast with jam are all popular options that are high in refined carbohydrates. At least for some people, such foods may make blood sugar and insulin spike. That could lead to a midmorning crash, which in turn could encourage someone to have a midmorning snack. Is that a bad idea? Maybe it is one reason to flip the food pyramid.

If We Flip the Food Pyramid, Will It Help with Weight Loss?

Dr. Gardner has run studies comparing the results of healthful low-carb diets to healthful low-fat diets. He and his colleagues found no significant difference in the weight loss people experienced on average. But none of us is an average person. The range of responses to these diets was huge, with some people losing a lot of weight and other losing none or even gaining.

How to Lose Weight

Based on this research, it seems no single diet will work for everyone. What makes a big difference is satiety. If what you eat makes you feel full and keeps you feeling full, it will help keep you from eating too much. No need to flip the food pyramid in that case. And, says Dr. Gardner, no need to rely on continuous glucose monitors unless your blood sugar is out of range. Just paying attention to how food makes you feel and to the maxim Eat Real Food will be a pretty good guide for most of us.

Dietary Guidelines That Flip the Food Pyramid Shape Food for Kids

One important way that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are implemented is school lunch. Institutions receiving funds from the federal government must follow these guidelines. Substituting minimally processed foods for the inexpensive ultraprocessed foods that are currently found on many school menus will probably be more expensive. The new guidelines also recommend that kids not get any foods with added sugar until they are at least ten years old. That would be a big difference in children’s diets, at as big as when we flip the food pyramid. Is it practical?

This Week’s Guest

Christopher Gardner, PhD, is a nutrition researcher. He is the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Listen to the Podcast

The podcast of this program will be available Monday, March 16, 2026, after broadcast on March 14. You can stream the show from this site and download the podcast for free. In this episode, Dr. Gardner discusses the types of fat he uses in his kitchen and why. What oils does he choose for sautés or salad dressing? What is his perspective on olive oil? what does he eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and what is he buying at the market?

Download the mp3, or listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Transcript of Show 1465:

 transcript of this show was created using automated speech-to-text software (AI-powered transcription), then carefully reviewed and edited for clarity. While we’ve done our best to ensure both readability and accuracy, please keep in mind that some mistakes may remain. If you have any questions regarding the content of this show, we encourage you to review the original audio recording. This transcript is copyrighted material, all rights reserved. No part of this transcript may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission.

Joe

00:00-00:01

I’m Joe Graedon.

Terry

00:01-00:05

And I’m Terry Graedon. Welcome to this podcast of The People’s Pharmacy.

Joe

00:06-00:28

You can find previous podcasts and more information on a range of health topics at peoplespharmacy.com.

Americans keep flip-flopping on food. For years, experts recommended low-fat diets. Now, the pendulum has swung back. This is The People’s Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graedon.

Terry

00:34-00:44

The new dietary guidelines for Americans prioritize protein, especially animal protein. They also encourage us to eat real food. What does that mean?

Joe

00:45-00:52

Our guest today is one of the country’s leading nutrition researchers. He will explain the changes in these new recommendations.

Terry

00:53-00:56

Will the new guidelines change the way you eat and feed your family?

Joe

00:58-01:06

Coming up on The People’s Pharmacy, learn about the food fight. Should we flip the food pyramid upside down?

Terry

01:14-02:47

In The People’s Pharmacy Health Headlines: Many medical professionals are skeptical about the value of multivitamins. A fresh analysis of data from the COSMOS trial of multivitamins and cocoa flavanols now suggests that the multivitamin-multimineral combination used in the study slowed aging.

The conclusion is based on almost 1,000 study volunteers with an average age of 70. Compared to those taking placebo tablets, those on the multi for two years aged more slowly according to two markers of biological aging. In addition to slower aging, those in the vitamin supplement arm of the study had lower inflammation and better cognitive function.

Epigenetic aging clocks are not perfect, but they do offer some sense of how fast a person is aging relative to chronological age. The slowing was small, between one-tenth and two-tenths of a year. People whose aging was accelerated before the study began got the most noticeable benefit from multivitamin action.

The researchers suggest that aging more slowly in this way could translate to a somewhat lower risk of cancer. The author summarized: In conclusion, we provide evidence from a large-scale and long-term randomized controlled trial that a daily multivitamin and mineral combination is a safe, readily accessible, and low-cost intervention that may slow epigenetic aging.

Joe

02:48-03:56

There’s something that might make you age faster at the cellular level. If you have difficult people in your life who create problems, they could be aging you at a faster rate than normal. These hasslers seemingly create biological aging in those around them. The study involved 2,345 participants ranging in age from 18 to 103 years old.

The researchers measured cumulative biological aging data. Hasslers were defined as people causing problems or making life difficult. The negative interactions could range from everyday irritations and criticism to exclusion, hostility, denunciations, or even violence.

The people who participated in the study reported that on average they experienced 8.1% of their network members as hasslers. The more hasslers in your life, the more pronounced the aging effect. People who make you feel bad may add roughly nine months of biological age to your life. The authors suggest avoiding hasslers whenever possible and seeking out people who are supportive.

Terry

03:57-04:43

There’s a common perception that getting older means you lose your edge and start to fall apart. But what if we viewed aging as an opportunity for improvement instead? A new study published in the journal Geriatrics suggests that some of us become healthier and more creative as we age.

The key seems to be in our attitude. Participants enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study and took tests of cognitive ability and walking speed. Their average age at the start of the study was 68 years. After a follow-up of up to 12 years, researchers repeated the assessment on more than 11,000 people. These volunteers had also recorded their beliefs about the aging process.

Joe

04:44-05:07

Almost half, 45% of the participants, showed improvement in either cognitive performance or walking speed, or both. If the investigators also included people who stayed the same after several years, the proportion of those who did not decline with age was over half. Significantly, more of the people who improved had expressed positive views of aging at the outset of the study.

Terry

05:08-06:17

Children in North America eat a lot of junk food. A study notes that nearly half of the calories consumed by Canadian preschoolers come from ultra-processed foods. The investigators wanted to know whether such a diet affects emotional and behavioral functioning.

They found that ultra-processed food consumption at age 3 is associated with greater anxiety, fearfulness, and depression at age 5. These results parallel those from a British study linking burgers, fried chicken, potato chips, and chocolate to hyperactivity at age 7.

The authors suggest that feeding young children less ultra-processed foods could result in better mental health as they grow older.

And that’s the health news from the People’s Pharmacy this week.

Welcome to The People’s Pharmacy. I’m Terry Graedon.

Joe

06:17-06:31

And I’m Joe Graedon.

Americans have been fighting about food for decades. First, eggs were bad. Now they’re good. Olive oil was too high in saturated fat. Now it’s a cornerstone of the preferred Mediterranean diet.

Terry

06:32-06:44

The latest version of Dietary Guidelines for Americans is controversial. It was presented with a graphic that turns the food pyramid upside down. What should you know about healthy eating?

Joe

06:45-07:02

To help us answer that question, we turn to Dr. Christopher Gardner. Professor Gardner is a leading nutrition researcher. He’s the Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Terry

07:03-07:07

Welcome back to the People’s Pharmacy, Dr. Christopher Gardner.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

07:08-07:10

Joe and Terry, thanks for having me back.

Joe

07:10-07:49

Christopher, it is so good to have you back on the People’s Pharmacy. It’s been far too long and so much has happened in the world of food.

So let’s just start at the beginning. There’s a lot of confusion and emotion around food in general. It’s so complicated. Our grandparents, they had it so simple. They went out to the garden. They cooked what was available. There was no controversy about good foods and bad foods.

So we’re going to start right off with the dietary guidelines. Who sets them up?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

07:50-08:10

Oh, yeah. So the secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have shared that responsibility since the beginning, which is a little odd because it seems like it should be Health and Human Services, given that the agricultural community has an obvious conflict of interest. But that’s the short answer.

Terry

08:11-08:19

That definitely makes it more complicated, I think, for them to be able to collaborate on these guidelines. What are the guidelines supposed to do?

Joe

08:19-08:23

Terry, before that, why do they have a conflict of interest?

Terry

08:23-08:23

Okay.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

08:25-08:52

Right. So you can’t, let’s say you represent the cattleman’s industry, and the pork industry, and the egg industry, and the scientists say you should eat less of something.

Wow, that would work against your interest to tell somebody that you represent that the whole American public should eat less of you. But if you’re a vegetable and fruit growing type person and the scientists say eat more veggies and fruits, well, it’s easy to suggest eating more of someone you represent, but not less.

Terry

08:54-08:55

Keep going.

Joe

08:55-09:02

I just wanted to know why it was [a] conflict. Back to your question.

Terry

09:02-09:19

Well, it sounds as though this dietary guideline project has been complicated right from the beginning if they’ve had to collaborate from the beginning.

What is the function of the guidelines? What’s the big idea?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

09:19-10:36

Yeah, so great question. So there’s a whole story that Marion Nestle is the best at explaining of why they originated in 1980. But when they did originate in 1980, they made a deal, or it was part of their write-up, that every five years, just in case there was new science, they would update them.

And so there have been updates every five years since 1980. And the way they’ve gone about this over the last 20 years or so, not necessarily in the beginning, was they would get together a group of scientists and refer to them as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. And for two years, that group would review any new papers that came out since the last time they were issued. And the group would submit an advisory report to the secretaries of ag and health and human services.

And as an advisory, they didn’t have to take the advice. And over time, there’s many times they did not take the advice, but many times they did take the advice.

And then it was really USDA and HHS that issued those guidelines sometime the next year after they got this report. And I have lots of details to share with you about what happened this time, but that’s the short answer.

Joe

10:36-10:48

Well, before we get to what happened, what’s the point? I mean, why do we even have dietary guidelines and what are they supposed to do for American health?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

10:48-12:47

I’m really glad that you started there. So it is kind of interesting that when you read these, every time they’ve been reissued, the very beginning says these particular guidelines are really not for the American public to read. A lot of scientific work went into this, a lot of the language is rather technical. So this is really for health professionals and policymakers. It’s a really long, boring document.

But at its best, what it does is it informs federal safety net programs. So if you’re thinking school lunch, school breakfast, women, infants, and children, there’s really about 20 to 25 federal safety net programs to help people who don’t have enough to eat. And so when you’re trying to provide more food for those in need, there’s some guidelines that say, well, you should make sure you emphasize this and try to avoid that because we would like these people getting federal assistance to get healthy choices. So the biggest impact of those dietary guidelines is actually on like kids getting school lunch and school breakfast, not so much the general public.

And it’s well known that if you look at what’s been stated in the dietary guidelines, because this is actually part of the advisory group’s responsibility every five years to get a hint of how America is eating. And that’s done by looking at something called the healthy eating index. And actually people go through group by group, the veggies, then the fruits, then the grains, then the meat, then the dairy.

And Americans for a long time have not followed the dietary guidelines, which is a super interesting part because quite often some social influencers have said, “Oh my God, the dietary guidelines as written are killing us. We have an obesity epidemic, a diabetes epidemic. Oh my God, we better change them.”

And the typical response among those who made them is, well, people aren’t following them.

Terry

12:47-12:48

Aha.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

12:48-12:59

It’s not following them that made them sick. We have them available, but most people don’t follow them. So that would be an interesting experiment if we check their health after they did.

Terry

12:59-13:13

So you can have good advice to look both ways before you cross the street. And if you fail to look both ways, you just ignore that and look at your phone instead while you’re crossing the street and you get run over. You can’t really blame the guidelines, right?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

13:14-13:23

Exactly. That’s been a very frustrating point to try to deal with with social influencers lately, and it’s actually just led to more confusion than is necessary.

Terry

13:24-13:46

Well, Dr. Gardner, you mentioned that these guidelines traditionally are long, boring documents. Long, I mean, 100 pages or so. And apparently, the most recent ones are a lot shorter, like maybe 10 pages. Can you tell us how they have changed the advice from the previous set of guidelines?

Joe

13:46-13:49

And why are they so controversial?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

13:52-14:52

Yep. Okay, so picture the last guidelines were 164 pages from 2020. But actually, the government put together all kinds of short versions of those, depending on who the audience was. There’s a five and a 10-page version. And if you look at all the marketers and the communicators, they set up different length documents depending who they were targeting.

And this particular one, I honestly thought it was 12, but maybe it’s 10 pages. I think the one I have is 12 pages long. That sounds much shorter, but there’s a 90-page document that goes with it. And there’s also a 400-page document that goes with it.

If you want even more detail and to put that in perspective, I worked on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. We generated a 421-page report with a 1,000-page supplement that went into the details. And I could probably pretty quickly explain why it’s so long if you want me to go there.

Joe

14:52-15:25

Well, you know, I think everybody has heard by now about the food pyramid. And so I think the food pyramid kind of boils down the dietary guidelines to something that doctors and patients and just the rest of us can kind of make sense of. But this new food pyramid has got everybody all excited. Why? What’s the big deal?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

15:25-17:27

Excited in both directions, like super happy and super sad.

So interestingly, the original food pyramid that came about in 1991, if you look into the history of it, nobody actually really liked the food pyramid from the beginning. And one of the reasons they didn’t like it is there were tiers to this pyramid. The base of it said six to 11 servings of grains, just as one obvious example.

And people thought that was bewildering. And so when you actually read the details behind the graphic, it said, well, if you’re a small, inactive person, you might need six servings. And if you’re a large, super active person, you might need 11.

And so after quite a few years, they actually got rid of the standard food pyramid and then made mypyramid.gov. And you got to go online for that one and say how big and how active you are. And then instead of getting a huge range, it said, oh, you should get six and you should get eight and you should get 10. And so that was a little bit better.

But at the end of the day, a lot of people didn’t understand the pyramid and they thought, oh, the tip of the pyramid, that’s the top. That must be the most important thing. So I’m going to go straight to the top and have the most of that. And the original intent had been that’s the smallest part of the pyramid is the tip. And that’s the thing you’re supposed to have the least of.

So in 2011, after 20 years, they completely abandoned the pyramid and came up with myplate.gov. And they said, oh, half your plate should be veggies and fruits. And the other half can be grains and protein sources and a little circular thing of dairy on the side. And they said, these are simpler.

Interestingly, if you clicked on either the pyramid or myplate.gov, there’s a mind-numbing amount of detail, and the architecture never changed. It talked about lots of different things in very specific language.

Joe

17:28-17:48

Well, I have to tell you, Dr. Gardner, we have a break. We’re going to stop for just a few seconds. But when we come back, we’re going to talk about the new food pyramid and why are people so excited. So get ready. We’re going to talk food pyramid 2026.

Terry

17:50-18:06

You’re listening to Dr. Christopher Gardner, Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. He’s the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Gardner has studied the effects of popular weight loss diets comparing low-fat to low-carb eating patterns.

Joe

18:07-18:12

After the break, we’ll find out more about the new food pyramid and why they got rid of my plate.

Terry

18:12-18:17

What does it mean that the new guidelines tip the food pyramid upside down?

Joe

18:17-18:21

The new guidelines put a stronger focus on protein, especially animal protein.

Terry

18:22-18:24

Is protein in short supply in the American diet?

Joe

18:24-18:27

We’ll also talk about breakfast. What’s your favorite?

Terry

18:39-18:42

You’re listening to The People’s Pharmacy with Joe and Terry Graedon.

Joe

18:51-18:54

Welcome back to The People’s Pharmacy. I’m Joe Graedon.

Terry

18:54-19:11

And I’m Terry Graedon.

Joe

19:11-19:24

The new dietary guidelines for Americans from 2025 to 2030 emphasize protein, especially animal protein. Are Americans really deficient in protein?

Terry

19:25-19:32

The theme of the guidelines is that we should eat real food. That’s something we’ve been advocating here at the People’s Pharmacy for decades.

Joe

19:32-19:45

Our guest is one of the country’s leading nutrition experts. He’s studied vegetarian diets, garlic, ginkgo biloba, fish oil, and other omega-3 fats, as well as a range of weight loss diets.

Terry

19:45-19:57

We’re talking with Dr. Christopher Gardner, Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. He’s the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Joe

19:58-20:09

Dr. Gardner, food pyramid, 2026. Why is everybody so excited? What’s the deal on meat and dairy and…

Terry

20:10-20:12

And why did they give up on the plate?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

20:13-21:06

Yep. So I have an opinion about that. It’s my personal opinion. So I don’t have any data to support this.

Interestingly, this administration has been really gung-ho for getting at ultra-processed food. They ended up calling it highly-processed food. At the end of the day, it’s basically junk food that Americans have been eating too much for a really long time.

And they said, you know, we are on a mission here and we’re going to take this more seriously than any administration before us. We are going to make the most dramatic changes that have ever been witnessed in rewriting and shortening these guidelines. And to show you how revolutionary this is, let us show you the new graphic. So this is the pyramid on its head. We have flipped the entire thing upside down.

Terry

21:06-21:09

So it’s teetering on the point of the triangle, right?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

21:10-22:49

And I think it was meant to show that this is a really, really dramatic shift. And you should take note, we are super proud that we are taking this on for the first time. So the challenge there is if you really look through all the details, most of it hasn’t changed.

So the very first recommendation is to not eat too many calories and to balance those out to watch your weight. That’s the same.

The second one, let’s come back to, it has to do with prioritizing protein every day. That is the one that has the most people curiously looking into the details.

But then it says eat veggies and fruits, eat four servings of whole grains, don’t eat too much added sugar, eat healthy fats. They added a cool thing about the gut for the microbiome. And most of the recommendations are really carried over from the past.

The red meat and the prioritizing protein are two of the big changes. And the other one was for dairy, it very specifically said whole fat dairy and three servings a day. And for so, so long, the dairy part recommended low fat dairy. So those are the big changes. And I think there’s about 12 different points if you go through each one, one at a time. Most of them are actually the same. It’s not very radical.

So my opinion of the flipped pyramid is it’s sensationalist. It’s to show how radically different things are. If you read through it, it’s not really that different except for the protein and the whole fat dairy and kind of focusing on ultra-processed food. But that’s a separate topic. Keep going.

Terry

22:50-23:11

Let’s talk about that protein focus, because my recollection is and, you know, my memory’s not perfect, but my recollection is that a long time ago when we talked to you before, you said most Americans are getting already plenty of protein and don’t really need to focus on getting more.

A, was that true? And B, is it still true?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

23:12-25:13

Was true, still is true, but it would be hard to know that going in any grocery store or crawling out from any rock and looking around right now because everything says high protein.

There’s protein water, there’s protein Pop-Tarts, there’s protein cereal, there’s protein soup. You would think as you go through the grocery store, I mean, tell me if you have experienced the same thing. I’ve seen so many foods in font 12. This is yogurt. This is grain. This is something else. But protein is in twice the size font of whatever the food is. Like it seems to be more important that they tell you it has protein than they tell you what the food is actually itself. It’s turned out to be an incredibly effective marketing tool.

And so after seeing all the protein powder, all the protein bars, the David bar, which crammed more protein in a bar than anybody’s ever managed to do before, only because of this bizarre undigestible fat that they added to it, which is super processed, they put all this protein in it.

And then I think because they’re saying, oh, you know what? The new target range is no longer, okay, now sorry for these units here, 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. I don’t know if you want to stop and explain that, but that’s just the general way they refer to it. It’s no longer 0.8. It’s 1.2 to 1.6, which kind of sounds like double.

And my frustration as a public health person and a nutrition scientist is somebody’s going to look at that and say, that’s why there’s protein in everything at the grocery store. Oh my God, for all these years, it’s been wrong. They’ve only been telling us to get half the amount we need. And thank God they’re labeling all that food in the grocery store. And thank God they brought red meat back. Because as an American, for most Americans, when they think of protein, they think of meat. They don’t really think of beans, legumes, peas, lentils, and…

Terry

25:13-25:14

Peanut butter.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

25:15-26:51

Joe and Terry, yeah, that’s been my push for years is everything has protein in it.

The dietary guidelines have always pointed out what the nutrients of concern are, and those have typically been fiber and calcium and vitamin D, and for infants and young kids, iron.

Protein has never been a nutrient of concern that Americans aren’t getting enough of, and so it is bizarre that they chose to do that.

By the way, the National Academies is the one who comes up with the DRIs, the Dietary Reference Intakes, where they actually list amounts of nutrients that you get. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans is separate. It’s the USDA and Health and Human Services. And their main job is supposed to show you what servings of what foods would get those numbers for you. So technically [it] isn’t their purview to be putting numbers in with their recommendations.

So weird that they put numbers, weird that the numbers are double what they were when there isn’t a protein problem. Weird that they brought red meat back in their new flipped pyramid. It is at the very top in the upper left. And when Americans read top to bottom and left to right, that is the first thing that they see is this big thing of red meat followed by a huge turkey and some other meat, and whole fat dairy thing.

So that’s what has people questioning WTF. What happened? Was the science all wrong for all those years?

Terry

26:51-26:58

And of course, Americans have a hard time with the metric system. So trying to figure out grams per kilogram is a challenge.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

26:58-27:57

And so they just look for the big font. Oh, okay. All I really know is it’s protein. So I’m going to get my protein pop tarts and my protein soup and my protein candy bar. And if somebody says, no, no, no, they said eat whole food.

Oh, wait, no more junk food. Okay. And I personally, Joe and Terry, I do like the no junk food, less highly processed, less ultra-processed food.

But I think if they recognize how many of those high protein foods are junk foods, then they’ll say, oh, well, thank God you clarified that. Now I know to get my meat.

No, no, for the last 20 years, the Dietary Guidelines advisory committees have always said less meat, less red meat and processed meat in particular. And after handing it off to the Secretary of Ag, that was transferred to choose lean sources of meat instead of eating less red meat. So that went counter.

Joe

27:57-28:39

So, Dr. Gardner, let’s move on to fat. Because for years, we were told low fat, no fat, that’s the answer to good health. And there were all these dairy products. I mean, you had low fat yogurt, no fat yogurt, no fat cottage cheese. Oh, and milk, it’s got to be low fat. Or skim. Skim milk is so much healthier than whole milk.

And now they’ve turned that upside down. Did they get that right? Did they get that wrong? What does Dr. Christopher Gardner think about dairy?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

28:41-31:28

Okay. Well, take one step back because the fat thing was an oversimplification. They always meant saturated fat. And that seemed to be too much for the American public to handle.

So the marketer said, let’s just be more simplistic. Let’s say less fat. And then quite immediately, the health community pushed back and said, no, no, no, that was supposed to be less meat and lard and butter and things like that. It was supposed to be less saturated fat, but olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, the unsaturated fats are okay. So let’s just differentiate saturated from unsaturated.

But Joe and Terry, dairy fat is a little different. So all the different fats have different lengths of carbon chains. And part of the reason butter smells like butter is butyric acid only has four carbons. It’s a saturated fat. But there honestly aren’t that many studies that are well done of something as super practical as whole milk versus skim milk in our school kids.

So this is one of the main places where the battlegrounds lies, because one of those places where it really is having an impact is not, Terry, as you were saying, going to the street and looking both ways before you cross. This is like, what are schools allowed to buy? And it says schools can’t buy whole fat dairy.

Interestingly, schools could buy low fat dairy that was chocolate and full of sugar. And that’s actually appalled many of us in the health community for many years. But let’s say you got rid of the chocolate and the sugar and just had low-fat milk versus whole-fat milk, believe it or not, there’s almost no studies on that.

But think about this. One of the main issues of saturated fat is cholesterol in the blood, which leads to heart disease. How many 12-year-olds have heart attacks? None. How many 15-year-olds? Okay, maybe one or two. But the main way to look at that outcome of switching your saturated fat source for adults has been a quick blood draw to see what your LDL and HDL cholesterol are like. And nobody wants to let their kids go in for blood draws for drinking different kinds of milk.

So I’m actually working with a group right now that’s doing a really interesting low fat versus whole fat milk study in kids. But it’s not cholesterol that is the main outcome. It’s lots of other possible health outcomes. And so the people who are pushing back on the whole fat dairy and saying it’s okay are kind of within their right to do that cause there is not a strong evidence base against whole fat dairy and kids.

Terry

31:28-31:46

So they’re saying it’s okay, but what you’re saying is we don’t have the evidence to say it is or it isn’t okay. And there are some people who worry that a very low-fat diet, if you’re very young, you know, two, three, four, might not be good for your brain.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

31:47-32:03

Yes. And that’s actually what our Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee found out, that some of that whole-fat dairy was better, especially for really young kids. So the idea is, what about middle school and high school? At what point does it switch over, if it switches over?

Joe

32:03-32:09

You’ve used that bad word, LDL cholesterol.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

32:10-32:11

Yeah, Ok.

Joe

32:11-33:07

With regard to whole fat dairy. Now I want to switch for a moment because we seem to demonize foods. There are good foods and there are bad foods. And for a long time, eggs were bad foods because they had cholesterol and because they would therefore cause heart attacks.

Well, there is this rather interesting fellow, Dr. Nick Norwitz, MD, PhD. You may have heard of him at Harvard. I think he was at Harvard. But in any event, he started eating an enormous number of eggs, 24 eggs a day, two cartons of eggs for 30 days. That’s a lot of eggs. 720 eggs, 133,200 milligrams of cholesterol over the course of a month.

Terry

33:07-33:10

And most of us would never want to see another egg after we’d done that.

Joe

33:11-33:16

But he measured his LDL cholesterol. It went down. How could that be?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

33:17-34:59

Oh, because they probably got less saturated fat in their diet. So the saturated fat in the diet has a more direct impact on the LDL cholesterol in your blood than the dietary cholesterol. And that’s been known for decades.

The liver actually makes a lot of cholesterol on a day-to-day basis. And all the cholesterol that you eat goes to the liver in your body before it goes anywhere else.

And for most people, and maybe for Nick in particular, he’s probably just a super efficient compensator. He says, “Oh, I don’t need to make any liver cholesterol today. I ate 24 eggs today. So I’m just not going to make any internal cholesterol.” And it’s kind of a wash.

So to be honest, Gerald Reaven, who’s a Stanford professor and who is the godfather or the father, whatever you want to call it, of insulin resistance as it relates to things like LDL cholesterol and triglyceride. And he has passed away, bless his heart.

He did one of the oldest studies where people had 900, 600, 300, or zero grams, milligrams of cholesterol a day, and it didn’t impact their blood cholesterol. And you can add that to a dozen other studies that showed it’s really not the cholesterol in your diet. It’s the saturated fat, but it’s kind of a moot point, Joe and Terry, because most things that have cholesterol also have saturated fat with two exceptions.

Are you ready? Drum roll, eggs and shellfish have a ton of cholesterol, but they don’t have much saturated fat. So they kind of got a bad rap from that whole saturated fat LDL cholesterol thing.

Joe

35:00-35:03

Well, I remember when we weren’t supposed to eat shrimp.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

35:04-35:49

Yeah, because of that. And so they’re kind of off the hook. Now picture, so I don’t know if you know this, Joe and Terry, but maybe when I was talking to you last, which was a while ago, my two favorite terms now are “instead of what” and “with what?”

And eggs are my favorite example. So picture scrambled eggs or picture egg McMuffin or picture eggs with sausage and bacon versus an omelet with veggies in it and sauce on top. Picture cheesy eggs with sausage and bacon. So is it really just the eggs or is it that you had eggs with cheese, with bacon, with sausage…

Terry

35:46-36:08

Or, Dr. Christopher Gardner, our favorite, Joe’s favorite breakfast specifically, is refried beans. I sauté some onions in a little olive oil, and then I put in the refried beans. And then when the refried beans are all nice and warm, I cook an egg on top. And that’s how we have our eggs.

Joe

36:08-36:11

And I like peppers as well.

Terry

36:11-36:11

Oh, yeah.

Joe

36:11-36:36

It’s like it gets me through at least half a day or longer. It’s wonderful.

Well, we do need to take another break. When we come back, we want to talk about weight loss. We want to talk about Christopher Gardner’s favorite foods. We want to talk about the future of the food industry. So keep those thoughts. We’ll be right back.

Terry

36:37-36:50

You’re listening to Dr. Christopher Gardner, Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. He is the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Joe

36:51-36:59

After the break, we’ll talk about the obesity epidemic. Are there some dietary patterns that make it easier to lose weight?

Terry

36:59-37:06

Dr. Gardner’s research has shown that lots of different diets can contribute to good health throughout the lifespan.

Joe

37:07-37:11

How can people find out which diet works best for them?

Terry

37:12-37:22

The new dietary guidelines suggest that kids should not have any food with added sugar until they’re 10 years old. That would be a big change.

Joe

37:22-37:27

Find out about the risks and the benefits of the new food pyramid.

Terry

37:39-37:56

You’re listening to The People’s Pharmacy with Joe and Terry Graedon. Welcome back to the People’s Pharmacy. I’m Terry Graedon.

Joe

37:54-38:10

And I’m Joe Graedon.

Joe

38:21-38:41

Have you ever tried to lose weight by focusing on a particular dietary approach? Did it work? Some people embrace the low-carb Atkins approach, while others sing the praises of the Dean Ornish low-fat strategy. Is there one best diet for everyone?

Terry

38:41-38:51

Today, we’re talking about the food fight over dietary guidelines for Americans. The food pyramid was flipped upside down. How will that affect your food choices?

Joe

38:52-39:07

We are talking with Dr. Christopher Gardner, a leading nutrition researcher. He’s the Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Terry

39:08-39:37

Dr. Gardner, it is no secret that one of the biggest problems for Americans in terms of diet and health is that there’s too much obesity. People are too fat. People are eating too much or else they’re eating the wrong things.

So are there dietary patterns that make it easier to lose weight? We know you have done some research in this regard.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

39:38-42:45

Oh, I did a lot. Yeah, so we’ve had 1,000 people across two different studies where we did a lot of focus on low-fat and low-carb. And we compared them head to head and drum roll, pretty much a wash.

They both on average lead to about the same amount of weight loss and almost everybody loses weight on them, especially if they’re healthy.

So our second of the two studies was one where we had a healthy low fat and a healthy low carb and the average weight loss was the same. But Joe and Terry, what was stunning was always the range of response to that. So some of the participants gained weight and some lost a lot of weight on both diets.

And so a lot of people have been looking for personalization of diets. So is there, oh, maybe insulin resistant people do better on low carb and insulin sensitive people do better on low fat. That was our main hypothesis in the study. And it failed when it was a healthy low carb and a healthy low fat.

At one point, we thought genetic predisposition might be part of this. And so we got what we thought were low-carb predisposed people and low-fat predisposed people, and that also failed.

So everybody’s been looking sort of for this magic bullet. Is it the carbs, fats, and protein? Let me just go to protein for a second. We never focused on the protein. But I will say that I looked at our two studies and several other studies, and I know protein is a huge craze and in theory protein is satiating and helping people out.

But when we looked at a bunch of studies a year or two years out, almost every group, no matter how good they were at getting lower in carb or lower in fat, ended up almost exactly at 20% protein.

Even the most famous study out there called POUNDS Lost that had a 15% protein diet and a 25% protein diet. In the beginning, when they were excited about it, they did that. But a year or two out, they were both at 20%.

So you could talk about whether high or low protein has a difference. But when you actually watch people over time, it kind of nullifies. They end up at the same level of protein. So I don’t think it’s a macronutrient thing.

I think you can do pretty much any of the popular diets out there and find that it works for someone.

And sadly, I wish the health professionals had better advice, but you’re kind of going to have to biohack and figure out which one works the best for you. A lot of health professionals say the best diet to be on is the one that you can maintain for a really long time.

So if this is culturally adapted to your preferences, you like the taste, it works in social settings, it works with your family. All those are probably, I think, more important than low-carb or low-fat or high-protein.

Terry

42:45-43:33

We just saw a study published in Science Advances that looked at five different types of healthful, presumably healthful diet, and found that actually people who did well on any of these diets were likely to live longer. So it looks as though there’s quite a range of diets that can be healthful, that can contribute to good health into your later years. And that kind of makes sense if you think about human evolution, I mean, humans around the world have eaten a pretty wide range of diets and done well on them until, of course, we got to the junk food.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

43:34-45:58

Absolutely. And really, that’s the key. It’s not, it really isn’t low carb or low fat or high protein. It’s how much, I mean, this is my biggest concern always, added sugar and refined grain–the carbs that have a lot of calories and very little fiber to no fiber, and not very many nutrients that come with it.

So one of my favorite publications is from the Harvard group that looked at NHANES, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, over a course of 20 years to see if there were any trends, not just in protein, carbs, and fats, but type of protein, type of carb, and type of fat. And over 20 years, there were some very, very modest differences in all of those.

But what’s most stunning about the graphic that they show of this is when they say three types of fat, saturated mono and poly, is like 10% of calories from each one of those. It’s about 10% of calories from animal protein and maybe five to eight of plant protein. We’re still in the 10 range. About 10% of calories from good quality carbohydrates that have fiber in them. Okay, that’s 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. Oh, that adds up to 60. 40% of calories from added sugar and refined grains! That is the problem.

And that’s why low carb sounds very popular. If the low carb is getting rid of the added sugars and the refined grains, everybody wins.

The question is, what do you replace that 40% calories with? Hopefully you don’t replace them all. Then you’ll be in calorie deficit. That will help you lose weight. But let’s say you replaced 30 of the 40… here’s my biohack to it: I think somebody can do that in a healthy way and have 10 come from more carbs. 10 come from more protein, and 10 come from more fat. Or 30 from fat or 30 from carbs (as long as it’s healthy carbs or healthy fat).

So that actually gives you a whole bunch of different ways to go lower carb, but replace it all with healthy foods that are healthy sources of carbs, healthy sources of fat, and healthy sources of protein, which for me is beans, peas, and lentils, which bring fiber along with the protein.

Joe

45:58-46:50

We know that you are a peas, beans, and greens kind of guy, and we love that about you. I’m interested in how people can biohack their way to success. How do you find out what’s going to be best for you?

You talked a little earlier about insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance, and that’s a really big deal in metabolism these days. But how do you know what works best for you? There’s got to be some kind of a process. Some people are wearing CGMs, continuous glucose monitors to try and figure out what works.

And what I discovered, by the way, is that when I have oatmeal for breakfast, my blood glucose goes pretty high pretty fast.

Terry

46:50-46:56

And that’s even though I’m cooking steel-cut oats. It’s not like instant sugary oatmeal.

Joe

46:56-47:18

And we had a diabetes expert who said, don’t worry about it. That’s fine. Just eat your oats and you’ll be great. But if I have those refried beans with an egg, onions, and peppers, my blood glucose doesn’t go anywhere. It just stays rock solid. So help us figure out how to biohack our way to good health.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

47:19-47:23

And you sauteed those onions, right, and peppers in oil.

Joe

47:24-47:25

Yeah, olive oil.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

47:25-47:33

So you had fat. And if you had a fatty oatmeal breakfast, so what if you put a whole bunch of walnuts and nuts in there?

Terry

47:34-47:35

Actually, I do that sometimes.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

47:36-47:46

Right? And so the idea is it isn’t really just the one thing. First of all, so actually, Joe, let me just ask, do you have an issue with glucose?

Joe

47:47-47:47

Nope.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

47:47-47:48

Are you? Okay.

Joe

47:49-48:06

I mean, my glucose is usually pretty under control, like in the 90s to 100 range. And after breakfast, if I have my refried beans and egg, it may go up to 105 or 110. But if I have that oatmeal, it’ll go up to 130 or 140.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

48:07-49:53

So I’m worried that a lot of people who actually don’t have glucose problems are playing with the CGMs and taking it too seriously. And they’re trying to completely blunt any response, any glucose spike, which is ridiculous because your body is prepared to have carbs and fats and proteins. And when you have carbs, you will get a glucose spike. You will make insulin. You’ll put it away. And then the insulin gets broken down and the glucose is out of your blood.

If you try too hard to have no glucose spike at all, you’re going overboard. That’s too much. But when you’re just talking about how do you biohack, you know, in theory, you could make sure you don’t get a really high peak.

I actually think the bigger thing that we should try to biohack right now, Joe and Terry, is satiety. What makes you full? I actually asked this at a couple of conferences and I said, what would make you the most full and keep you full for the next hour or two? First, I’m going to tell you oatmeal with some fresh fruit and some nuts and maybe some whole fat yogurt on there and a bunch of people raised their hand versus eggs. That’s an omelet with some salsa and some veggies in there and a whole bunch of people raised their hand.

I said, “Isn’t there one breakfast that makes everybody full?” And I gave a couple options. And no, different people, different things are satiating for different people.

And so there’s two aspects of the satiety. One is when do you stop eating because you’re full? And when you eat again next, because you’re hungry again. So there are some things that because of bulk fill you up, but then an hour later, you’re hungry again.

Joe

49:53-49:57

I’m guessing you would not recommend Pop-Tarts for breakfast.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

49:57-50:40

The American breakfast for how many years has been carb on carb on carb. We have a sugary cereal, we have a piece of white bread, we put jelly on it with a glass of orange juice. That’s just simple carbs.

So yes, as soon as you switch from that to your beans and eggs, or to your cheesy eggs with bacon and sausage, you would be more full.

But I would say switch from that American sugary breakfast to your beans and eggs, not the cheesy eggs with bacon and sausage. But you’ll have to biohack that out for yourself and look at your numbers with your doctor for your cholesterol and your blood pressure and the things that we measure typically.

Terry

50:41-51:18

Dr. Gardner, I would like to go back to the new dietary guidelines for just a moment. It is related to what you’re talking about. We know that a lot of kids eat those Pop-Tarts and sugary cereals and so forth. And my understanding is that the new dietary guidelines suggest that kids should not be eating any foods with added sugar until they’re at least 10 years old. A, have I got it wrong? And B, is that a good idea? And is it practical?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

51:19-53:37

So it’s a great idea. The challenge is going to be, and this is what I’d really like to see. So I really admire the new administration for putting greater emphasis on this. It’s just obscene and obscene how much added sugar kids are eating and adults as well.

And also, you know, the deal with ultra-processed food and cosmetic additives and things like red color dye. And so I know the administration said, all right, no more of these dyes. And as far as I know, M&Ms and Skittles are still colored the same way.

And if they say no sugary things in schools, I have a feeling that if they recommend that, schools are going to need more money to buy more whole foods. And so part of the reason those are there, Joe and Terry, is because they’re inexpensive. They have a long shelf life for people with limited resources or for places like schools. They buy them because that’s what they have the budget for.

So I totally applaud this idea of getting rid of as many added sugars as we can. But it will really take some regulatory force that I haven’t seen yet to have more, for example, farm-to-table food.

I know that the administration took away a billion dollars of farm-to-school money recently, where it was going to come fresh from the farm. I know that some of the other safety net food money has been taken away.

So you’d have to say, yes, get rid of the sugars. And there’s going to be some regulations so that the food industry has its feet held to the fire and they can’t make these anymore. They can’t sell these.

And the immediate response, as has always been the case, is going to be: this is capitalism. We can make what we want and sell what we want, as long as people will buy it. That’s where the tension will be, not on the recommendation, not on the recommendation to avoid them, but on the power to change the food environment we all live in. That’s a, hey, if you come up with something clever and can sell it, that’s the way capitalism works. That’s a big lift.

Joe

53:39-54:22

Dr. Gardner, one of the most controversial areas in your field these days is fat. And I think a lot of people were told for a very long time, no fat, low fat is the answer. And so we saw all kinds of products that were marketed as low-fat, no-fat. And that has changed.

And so you now will see all kinds of products out there that will say, okay, we make our ice cream with avocado oil. It’s like, okay, instead of dairy, it’s avocado. Interesting.

Terry

54:23-54:24

It’s good.

Joe

54:24-54:51

But I want to get your feedback. What kind of oils are you cooking with? What do you put on your salad dressings? And what’s the deal on olive oil? Because I think everybody goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, olive oil is the greatest, but it does have some saturated fat in it.

So help us understand the Christopher Gardner perspective on oils and fat.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

54:52-56:42

Sure. I have very fatty foods. I put lots of avocado, lots of nuts and seeds. I drench my salads in olive oil or some kind of vinaigrette made with olive oil. Olive oil is pretty expensive, the good quality olive oil. So is avocado oil.

And so to be honest, canola, sunflower, safflower, there’s this whole bizarre seed oil debacle that’s just wrong. But it would take me more than 10 seconds to tell you why it’s wrong. All those unsaturated cooking, seasoning, salad dressing oils are fine, but please keep in mind that all of them have higher and lower quality, and the higher quality oils cost more.

So when you’re like, there’s this thing about seed oils that’s been going around and it’s true as you take a seed and you crush it in different ways you get the oil out, and if it’s a first press or if it’s a cold press, that’s the best quality. At some level, somebody goes along at the end of the day and squeezes the last little bit out of those seeds and puts in hexane and charcoal and bleaching to squeeze the last bit out. And that’s a lower quality oil and it will cost less.

And so all of those oils have higher and lower qualities and it’s pretty snooty to say only buy the high quality oils. So there’s a lot of things you can have that have unsaturated fat, like avocados and nuts and seeds. Those are not cheap either if you buy good quality avocados and nuts and seeds.

But, you know, I do a lot with the American Heart, and the American Heart for decades has embraced a high, unsaturated fat, Mediterranean-type diet that includes fatty fish, too.

Joe

56:44-57:14

If we were to sit down at your table invisibly and just watch what is Christopher Gardner eating on a regular basis, walk us through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or perhaps just breakfast and lunch.

But just tell us, what are the foods that you’re putting into your groceries bag and taking home, and what are you making most often? What are your favorites?

Dr. Christopher Gardner

57:16-57:23

Okay, yeah. And did you know I actually have a book coming out soon, and I put all my favorite recipes in the book.

Joe

57:21-57:35

Oh well you’ve got to put us on your list because we would love to talk and and see that book. So make sure we get a hold of that book as soon as it’s available, but tell us the good stuff.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

57:35-58:44

Okay, coming out in October, you’ll see that I have a couple of very basic breakfasts.

One is steel-cut oats with berries, and nuts, and soy milk, and a little shaved dried coconut, and cacao beans.

And then another one is I make this scrambled tofu dish. So I put in onions and bell peppers, and I put some greens in there like kale or chard. And then I mash up some tofu. And even though I’m not trying to fool myself, I put turmeric in there and nutritional yeast. So it looks kind of like scrambled eggs with veggies in it.

Another one is an avocado toast with kimchi on it, because I actually study the microbiome now. And that’s one of the ways I get fermented food into my breakfast is to have avocado toast with kimchi. So those are three of my standard breakfasts.

Joe

58:27-58:29

Wait, tell me about the toast.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

58:29-58:44

And the toast is a whole grain bread, whatever the most whole grain thing that I can find is, which is way more expensive than the wheat bread in the grocery store that’s not really whole wheat bread. It’s just wheat.

Joe

58:44-58:49

Terry is taking to baking bread and her whole wheat bread is phenomenal.

Terry

58:49-59:06

And I’ve now, speaking of not inexpensive, I like to buy stone ground flour from a local miller at the farmer’s market. So I’m paying extra for my flour, but I’m putting the labor in myself.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

59:06-01:00:04

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, so that labor or that time or that money… it all costs. If you want to talk about lunches, I’m looking at my favorite lunch. So salad. Oh, because salad is anything. There’s a grain based salad. I make a really good wheat berry salad. Today, downstairs, I went and got the regular lettuce salad. I’m just looking right now what I have. I have shaved almonds. I have garbanzo beans. I have edamame. I have tofu. I have bell pepper, carrots, red bell pepper. I have beets in it. I have cucumber in it. Just a lot of veggies and nuts and seeds and crunch and color. My salads are really beautiful.

I make a really good squash eggplant tempeh dish that has a pomegranate glaze. That’s one of my favorites that I make at home. So those are some of the favorite kind of things that I make. Is that enough for now?

Terry

01:00:04-01:00:05

That’s great. Thank you.

Joe

01:00:04-01:00:10

That’s perfect. And when that cookbook is available, we’d love to talk to you about it.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

01:00:10-01:00:21

And it’s not a cookbook. It’s called Food Sense. And actually, it’s got a chapter on protein, a chapter on seed oil, a chapter on organic, [and] my journey as a food scientist. And at the end are my favorite recipes.

Joe

01:00:21-01:00:36

Christopher, we’ve got one minute left. And so I need you to summarize the benefits and risks of the new food pyramid and what you would like to see for the future.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

01:00:37-01:01:20

Yeah, I love the eat real food. So if everybody would eat real food, let’s do that. I think they really, one of our strongest recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was eat more legumes, beans, peas, and lentils, and less red meat. I think they really got that one wrong.

And for the dairy, I think we should all recognize that three quarters of the world is lactose intolerant. And so I don’t think the issue is whole fat versus skim. I think it’s that most of the world can’t handle dairy. And it’s pretty insensitive to suggest that everybody get three servings of dairy a day.

Fall back on more veggies and fruits, more whole grains, more beans, peas, lentils, more nuts and seeds, and we’ll be okay.

Terry

01:01:20-01:01:26

Dr. Christopher Gardner, thank you so much for talking with us on The People’s Pharmacy today.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

01:01:27-01:01:29

Pleasure to be back. Thanks for having me.

Terry

01:01:30-01:02:07

You’ve been listening to Dr. Christopher Gardner. He’s a nutrition researcher and the Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Dr. Gardner is the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

He’s focused his research on the potential health benefits of various dietary components or food patterns using randomized controlled trials. The interventions have involved vegetarian diets, soy, garlic, omega-3 fats or fish oil, antioxidants, ginkgo biloba, and popular weight loss diets.

Joe

01:02:07-01:02:16

Lyn Siegel produced today’s show, Al Wodarski engineered, Dave Graedon edits our interviews, BJ Leiderman composed our theme music.

Terry

01:02:16-01:02:24

This show is a co-production of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC, with the People’s Pharmacy.

Joe

01:02:24-01:02:39

Today’s show is number 1,465. You can find it online at peoplespharmacy.com. That’s where you can share your comments about this episode. You can also reach us through email, radio at peoplespharmacy.com.

Terry

01:02:39-01:03:08

Our interviews are available through your favorite podcast provider. You’ll find the podcast on our website on Monday morning.

This week’s podcast also has information on the controversy over fats. Which oils does Dr. Gardner use for cooking or salad dressing? We’ll get hints on his favorite foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You could also watch the interview on YouTube. Look for The People’s Pharmacy.

Joe

01:03:08-01:03:38

At peoplespharmacy.com, you could sign up for our free online newsletter to get the latest news about important health stories. When you subscribe, you also have regular access to information about our weekly podcast. We would be grateful if you would write a review of The People’s Pharmacy and post it to the podcast platform you prefer. If you find our topics interesting, please share them with friends and family. In Durham, North Carolina, I’m Joe Graedon.

Terry

01:03:38-01:04:12

And I’m Terry Graedon. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next week. Thank you for listening to the People’s Pharmacy Podcast. It’s an honor and a pleasure to bring you our award-winning program week in and week out. But producing and distributing this show as a free podcast takes time and costs money.

Joe

01:04:12-01:04:22

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Terry

01:04:22-01:04:27

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Joe

01:04:27-01:04:40

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